Beauty and the Market: Actress Postcards and their Senders in Early Twentieth-Century Australia
TL;DR: Kelly et al. as discussed by the authors studied the use of picture postcards in early 20th century Australian theatre and found that women were major factors in the consumption of the glamour actress card.
Abstract: A hundred years ago the international craze for picture postcards distributed millions of images of popular stage actresses around the world. The cards were bought, sent, and collected by many whose contact with live theatre was sometimes minimal. Veronica Kelly's study of some of these cards sent in Australia indicates the increasing reach of theatrical images and celebrity brought about by the distribution mechanisms of industrial mass modernity. The specific social purposes and contexts of the senders are revealed by cross-reading the images themselves with the private messages on the backs, suggesting that, once outside the industrial framing of theatre or the dramatic one of specific roles, the actress operated as a multiply signifying icon within mass culture – with the desires and consumer power of women major factors in the consumption of the glamour actress card. A study of the typical visual rhetoric of these postcards indicates the authorized modes of femininity being constructed by the major postcard publishers whose products were distributed to theatre fans and non-theatregoers alike through the post. Veronica Kelly is working on a project dealing with commercial managements and stars in early twentieth-century Australian theatre. She teaches in the School of English, Media Studies, and Art History at the University of Queensland, is co-editor of Australasian Drama Studies, and author of databases and articles dealing with colonial and contemporary Australian theatre history and dramatic criticism. Her books include The Theatre of Louis Nowra (1998) and the collection Our Australian Theatre in the 1990s (1998).
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16 Apr 2020
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors highlight the pedagogical possibilities of working with postcards for teaching anthropology and related disciplinary fields by introducing a set of multifaceted tools and examples, and explore the multimodal qualities of working ethnographically on, within, or through postcards.
Abstract: This article showcases the pedagogical possibilities of working with postcards for teaching anthropology and related disciplinary fields by introducing a set of multifaceted tools and examples. It provides a framework for tangible reflexive teaching practices and a research methodology that supports, both intellectually and emotionally, a vibrant and mobile community of scholars. We commence with the emergence of the postcard, and its (widely undervalued) role as a research subject in the social sciences. Examples from the arts, literature, teaching and research offer inspiration for engaged and creative teaching formats. These cases support our claim that as seemingly ‘anachronistic’ object of communication, postcards are useful for teaching in the classroom, for teaching ethnography, and for community-based work and teaching. In fact, as a traveling communication device, the repurposed postcard lends itself to connect the oft-physically and conceptually divided spaces of the classroom and the ethnographic ‘field.’ Concurrently, the opening of postcards allows for a critique of the medium’s historical use in exoticization the ‘other.’ In other writing [anonymized], we explore in more detail the multimodal qualities of working ethnographically on, within, or through postcards. We here extend the pedagogical potentials to use postcards for innovative approaches in ethnographic research, public anthropology, and applied community work.
26 citations
Cites background from "Beauty and the Market: Actress Post..."
...In 1902, the British postal authority further standardized postcards by dividing the front side to make space for writing a personal message next to the address, thus establishing the classic format of what is nowadays associated with a postcard (see Kelly, 2004, p. 102)....
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...As a result, people often wrote short messages onto a picture’s blank spots (Rogan, 2005, p. 10; Kelly, 2004, p. 102)....
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Posted Content•
TL;DR: The Scrapbook project as mentioned in this paper explores the tension between the ideas of embodiment that connected our work, and the rigidities of academic convention by using various media, in substance and form, to provoke, challenge and confront its audience into dialogue, while simultaneously asking questions about the limits of our own legal imaginations.
Abstract: This article in scrapbook form represents the endeavour of the eight authors to document a recent, collective, academic journey. The project was one embarked upon as a means to explore tensions between the ideas of embodiment that connected our work, and the rigidities of academic convention. Using various media, this article strives, in substance and form, to provoke, challenge and confront its audience into dialogue, while simultaneously asking questions about the limits of our own legal imaginations.
17 citations
TL;DR: The Scrapbook project as discussed by the authors explores the tension between the ideas of embodiment that connected our work, and the rigidities of academic convention by using various media, in substance and form, to provoke, challenge and confront its audience into dialogue, while simultaneously asking questions about the limits of our own legal imaginations.
Abstract: This article in scrapbook form represents the endeavour of the eight authors to document a recent, collective, academic journey. The project was one embarked upon as a means to explore tensions between the ideas of embodiment that connected our work, and the rigidities of academic convention. Using various media, this article strives, in substance and form, to provoke, challenge and confront its audience into dialogue, while simultaneously asking questions about the limits of our own legal imaginations.
12 citations
TL;DR: For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights as discussed by the authors, a summer 2010 exhibit at the International Center for Photography, provides a vivid example of the role of the visual media in bringing racial violence into public view.
Abstract: If we needed confi rmation of our ongoing investment in the civil rights movement and the visual media that brought its local confrontations to a national audience, For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, a summer 2010 exhibit at the International Center for Photography, provides a vivid example.1 Drawing its title from Mamie Till’s heroic insistence on an open coffi n for her brutally murdered son and from the determination of African American photographers and newspaper editors to make the shocking image of Emmett Till’s face visible to the public, the exhibit and its accompanying volume powerfully affi rm the role of the visual media in bringing racial violence into public view. Simultaneously and less explicitly, however, the volume also illustrates how much more vexed this role is than the language that affi rms it, for the horrifi c photograph to which the title refers does not—indeed could not—accompany the title on the cover. Instead, the image is discreetly positioned at the volume’s interior.2 Replacing Till’s photograph on the cover is a more uplifting image by the same photographer. Ernest C. Withers’s depiction of the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike shows a long horizontal line of male demonstrators proudly carrying signs declaring “I AM A MAN.” Celebrating and extending the strikers’ visibility,
10 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 1993TL;DR: The Transvestite Continuum: Liberace-Valentino-Elvis Conclusion a tergo : Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in Bed as discussed by the authors The Chic of Araby: Transvestitism and the Erotics of Cultural Appropriation 13.
Abstract: Introduction List of Plates Part One: Transvestite Logics 1. Dress Codes or the Theatricality of Difference 2. Cross-Dress for Success 3. The Transvestite's Progress 4. Spare Parts: The Surgical Construction of Gender 5. Fetish Envy 6. Breaking the Code: Transvestitism and Gay Identity Part Two: Transvestite Effects 7. Fear of Flying or Why is Peter Pan a Woman 8. Cherchez la Femme: Cross-Dressing in Detective Fiction 9. Religious Habits 10. Phantoms of the Opera: Actor, Diplomat, Transvestite, Spy 11. Black and White TV: Cross-Dressing the Colour Line 12. The Chic of Araby: Transvestitism and the Erotics of Cultural Appropriation 13.The Transvestite Continuum: Liberace-Valentino-Elvis Conclusion a tergo : Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in Bed.
1,265 citations
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01 Jan 1985
TL;DR: In his essay made up of a series of quotes, Hoolboom presents issues of theory and sexual imaging as mentioned in this paper, and program notes document films by eight artists and discuss the relationship between theory and imaging.
Abstract: In his essay made up of a series of quotes, Hoolboom presents issues of theory and sexual imaging. Program notes document films by eight artists.
9 citations